Kellee Maize doesn't fit the demo of a hip-hop artist, unless that includes spiritually empowered, platinum-blonde white female social activists from small towns in Pennsylvania.

For Ms. Maize, though, it's all come to her quite naturally.

"I sort of grew up, even as a little girl, always rhyming in my head," she says. "I had a hip-hop group when I was 9 called Thunder and Lightning when Salt-N-Pepa and TLC were coming out. And I always loved dance."

Ms. Maize has incorporated the spiritual and physical into her solo act, and will release her second album, "Aligned Archetype," on Friday at FATE in the Strip.

Ms. Maize has become a player in the local club underground, both as an artist and a presenter with her guerilla marketing company Nakturnal. Originally, she came to Pittsburgh from New Berlin, in central Pennsylvania., to attend the University of Pittsburgh. Once here, she delved into the scene with her own radio show, a hip-hop group and a job at alt-weekly City Paper.

For her latest project, Ms. Maize reaches into the Baltimore Club Beat scene, having made a connection with some prominent DJs there, including King Tut and Scottie B, who supplied her with sizzling beats to rap over.

"They gave me free reign, all the separated tracks, and my producers here chopped up the songs, created space for vocals where they weren't any. We were able to do whatever we wanted." Baltimore Club Beats, she says, are "a blend of every kind of music that I love -- house music, hip-hop, any kind of electronic music is infused in Baltimore Club."

Bringing influences as diverse as Ani DiFranco and the Wu-Tang Clan, Ms. Maize mixes rap and vocals, spirituality and seduction on "Aligned Archetype." The spiritual undertone to her music, she says, is "that feminine energy returning to the planet and we have to find a way to harness it."

As for how she works that into music, she says, "When I originally started writing, it was like, 'This is wrong, and that's wrong, and I hate this, and that [makes me angry].' Now, I believe strongly the most important thing is to really change your own personal energetic field and think positively and project positive energy out into the world. That's what I see my music hopefully inspiring in people, is that thought becomes thing, and that it's our responsibility."

Although the easier path might have been an acoustic guitar, and she does write sometimes in a folk vein, Ms. Maize was drawn to the beats, and thought it was a good vehicle to reach people. She wasn't going to let being a white female stop her.

"I guess I just never ... I don't think about it that much. I've had my own business now for five years, so I've done a lot of things people have said I can't do. I've definitely dealt with people questioning me, but in Pittsburgh, I've been part of the community and an activist and supporting other people for 10 years. People see that I'm serious, and because I have a message behind the music, people know I'm not a novelty."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.